


Not Just Another Day at the Beach

by Brumeier



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Animal Transformation, Fairy Tale Elements, First Meetings, Immortality, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Magic, Red String of Fate, Redemption, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 14:04:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18262820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: Once upon a time there was a selfish man with a special gift who was turned into a squirrel. It wasn't until he met a lonely, spikey-haired man at the beach that he finally got a chance to turn things around.





	Not Just Another Day at the Beach

**Author's Note:**

> whatif_au challenge: fairy tale

Once upon a time, there was a squirrel. But he wasn’t just any squirrel, even though most people dismissed him as such. No, he was special. He’d been a man once: Gustin Blanchard, partner in what had been shaping up to be the most prolific mine of the California Gold Rush.

Gus had also been born with a special gift. He could see the connections between people, the often tenuous threads that stretched from one to countless others. He’d used it to his advantage, manipulating people in ways that benefited him alone. Breaking some connections and strengthening others in the pursuit of his own wealth and happiness.

If he had connections of his own, he was unable to see them.

Everything ended the day he met the woman who had so many threads they blended together in a kind of ethereal glow that surrounded her, shimmering and rippling like water in a sunlit pool.

“Gustin,” she’d said, her voice lilting and beautiful but also full of power. “You have abused your gift. Instead of helping others, you have only helped yourself.”

Perhaps if he had cowered and shown the proper respect, things might have gone differently for him. 

“It’s my gift,” he’d replied. “And no woman is gonna tell me what to do with it.”

Those were the last words Gus ever said. The woman had grinned a wide, terrible grin, and in the next moment she was towering over him like a giant. It was only when she bent down and picked him up that Gus realized he’d shrunk.

“You wish to squirrel away your gifts and your wealth? Then a squirrel you shall be.”

It had been a horrible moment for Gus, discovering he’d been transformed from a man of stature into a furry creature meant for a stewpot. He had no way to communicate – his words sounded like nothing but high-pitched chittering when he spoke – and no idea how he was supposed to live in his new body.

“You will have all the time in the world to figure it out,” the woman said cheerfully, as if she could understand him. “Until the day you can use your gift for the good of someone outside yourself, so shall you remain.” 

She’d left him, then. Left him to the whim of the elements and larger predators and hungry prospectors with guns and snares. Left him to figure out what her parting words had meant.

Gus couldn’t die. That became clear almost from the get-go. Whenever he thought he’d taken his last breath, he awoke renewed and unharmed. No hawk’s talons or wayward buggy wheels or buckshot would be the death of him. He didn’t need to eat or sleep or participate in any of the activities real squirrels did. And real squirrels wanted nothing to do with him, not even the females during mating season.

He tried every way he could think of to kill himself. When nothing worked, he took his anger out on the people who were lucky enough to still have their human form and their human lives. One family of homesteaders thought they had a ghost or demon plaguing them, until Gus revealed himself in a fury of bristling fur and bared teeth.

There was little else for him to do. When the anger finally bled away, Gus sought out the company of people again, watching as they changed with the ever-changing world. Buggies were replaced by automobiles, railways by highways. Phone lines replaced telegraph lines. Television replaced radio. Smart phones replaced everything. 

Gus watched it all. From the limbs of trees and while running along power lines, from the roofs of people’s houses and the grassy parks where they gathered in the sunshine. He took note of the connections between people, how some were strong as steel, and others as tattered as lace. Some were faded while others glowed with a bright, powerful light. Very rarely a thread would be colored red, and that was a thread unbroken by time or distance or circumstance. 

Gus followed the red lines, traveling as far as geography and squirrel stamina would allow. He didn’t understand them, those threads that always seemed to disappear over the horizon. What did they mean? Why did the people who shared them never seem to know about each other? The people they were attached to were generally unremarkable, from Gus’ admittedly limited perspective. Normal. Perhaps it was the connection itself that made them worthy. But if it was never realized, why have it at all?

One such normal, average person was a frequent visitor to the beach that Gus had recently taken up residence near. Just a regular man, with dark hair and a way of holding himself apart from the people around him. He surfed more days than not, a curious activity that Gus couldn’t see the appeal of. Then again, he hadn’t cared to get wet even when he had a human form.

The man had very few connections, all of them filmy and faded except the red one, the unbreakable thread. Gus knew, without knowing how, that the person on the other end of that thread was very far away. So he studied the end he had available to him, trying to understand why the man with the spiky hair should be distinguished by the red thread.

That unremarkable man was always pleasant, if distant. He kept to himself. When he wasn’t surfing, he was lying on a blanket reading a book or doing number puzzles. His body was lean, and scarred, and sometimes when he laid on his back looking up at the sky he’d cry, just a little. 

Gus grew bold in his quest to understand. He felt that if he could uncover the reason for the red thread it would be the key to releasing him from the curse he’d been placed under. So he made forays out on the beach, the sand hot on the pads of his feet, darting close to the man and then darting away again to get his attention. 

“Hey, little buddy,” the man said when he finally noticed Gus. He rolled over on his stomach and rested his chin on his hands. “Catching some rays?”

 _Why are you so special?_ Gus asked, the words coming out incomprehensible even to other squirrels.

“You hungry?” The man reached into the bag he always brought with him and pulled out a sleeve of crackers. He took one out and broke it up into small pieces, which he tossed over to Gus.

He didn’t need to eat them, but Gus made a show of tucking the cracker pieces in his cheeks before running off to his tree. First contact had been made.

From then on, whenever the man came to the beach he looked around for Gus. He always had crackers or nuts or granola to share, trying to coax Gus ever closer. Eventually Gus was taking the food right from his hand and allowing the man to take pictures of him with his phone. He never tried to hurt Gus.

“You have a name, little buddy? Mine’s John.”

Gus wondered how a man as kind as John, who would share his food with a common gray squirrel, could have so few connections. Why was he always alone? Gus knew a lot about loneliness after a hundred and sixty-plus years on his own, and he sensed that in John.

He didn’t know when it happened, but Gus stopped wanting to help John to break his curse. Now he wanted to help John simply because the man deserved it.

One day Gus saw the end of John’s red thread. It was attached to a man sitting further up the beach, hidden under a wide umbrella and layers of sunscreen. He seemed very different from John.

“This is stupid. I can’t believe you’re making me do this.”

He wasn’t alone. There was a woman with him, and a little girl, and they both shared a strong thread with him. Family, Gus thought.

“You need a break,” the woman replied. “And Maddy wanted to come to the beach. Two birds, one stone.”

“Hello? Deadly radiation?” The man gestured angrily at the sun. 

“You look well protected to me, Mer.”

The man caught sight of Gus and actually recoiled. “Ugh! This place is crawling with vermin!”

“It’s just a squirrel.”

“Do you have any idea the diseases that thing might be carrying?”

“Then don’t play with it. Let’s go build a sandcastle, Maddy.”

Gus had his doubts about the red thread. What could this man possibly have in common with John? Gus retreated to a safe distance and just watched. By the time Mer and his family left the beach, he’d read several magazines that had more words than pictures, done his own math puzzles, and taken a nap.

That night Gus retreated to his tree and tried to work it out. John and Mer seemed like complete opposites, with the exception of the math puzzles and the reading. Mer never came out from under his umbrella, and John stayed out in the sunshine. John was kind, and Mer had kicked sand at a seagull that ventured too close to his chair.

The red thread was unbreakable, though, so even if Gus didn’t understand what it meant, he knew it was important. Knew that most people with the red thread never got the chance to find out who was on the other end of it, even if they were both in the same state, same city.

Maybe, after so many years, he was finally ready to try and do something good for someone else. If only he knew how.

The next day, Mer was back to complain from the safety of his shady umbrella. Gus bypassed him and went to see John.

“There you are! I brought you something special today.”

Gus recognized it as cereal, tiny crunchy rings that he knew tasted good because he could almost always find some spilled at the park when families were there. Just because he didn’t need to eat didn’t mean he wasn’t curious about how things tasted.

He sat on John’s blanket, carefully plucking the cereal out of John’s hand while John filmed him with his phone, and tried to formulate a plan. He had no way to communicate about Mer, or the red thread. And if he ran off, John had no reason to follow him.

And then Gus smelled it with his highly superior squirrel sense of smell: a dog. He looked for it, and almost instantly made eye contact with the beast. The dog’s eyes narrowed, and Gus could hear it start to growl. He’d had a fair number of run-ins with dogs in the past, all bad, but for the first time he was pleased to see one.

 _Get ready_ , he chittered at John.

Right on schedule the dog charged, kicking up sand and barking ferociously. Gus gave what he hoped was a suitably terrified squeak and took off running – straight for Mer. As he’d hoped, the soft-hearted John gave chase, yelling at the dog to leave the poor squirrel alone.

Mer’s eyes widened comically as Gus made a beeline for him, jumping up on his leg and swarming over his shoulder. He gave a shout, the dog plowed into him, knocking him over backward, and Gus made it to his tree with time to spare. 

He ignored the barking dog that circled the tree, and the dog’s owner who came running after him shouting apologies. Gus only had eyes for John, who held a hand out for Mer and helped him to his feet. As soon as they touched, the red thread started to glow. Both men seemed to unconsciously lean toward each other. 

“You okay?” John asked.

“What? Oh. Uh…yes. I think so. Do you think I need to get a tetanus shot? Oh, god! Rabies!”

John just grinned, still holding on to Mer’s hand. “I think you’ll be fine. I don’t see a scratch on you.”

“I had no idea the beach could be so hazardous.” Mer looked down at their linked hands but didn’t say anything. “Um…maybe it would be safer over there? At the bar?”

“You offering to buy me a drink?” John asked.

“Oh, well, I don’t want to presume. I mean, I’m sure you have other things –”

“I’d love a drink.”

John dropped Mer’s hand and glanced over at the tree. When he saw Gus on the high branch, he gave him a two-finger salute.

In the next moment the witch woman, who Gus had not seen since she cursed him, was sitting beside him on the branch. No-one else in the vicinity seemed to take notice of her.

“Gustin Blanchard. Nice work.”

Gus was hit by a wave of vertigo, and nearly fell out of the tree when he realized he was in human form once again. He’d forgotten what it felt like to be so big and bulky. And hairless.

“What now?” he asked.

“Now you get to come with me. You’ve been on this earth quite long enough.”

“Where will we go?”

The woman smiled. “You’ll see when we get there. But trust me, it’s amazing.”

Gus looked back over at the bar, where John and Mer were talking, heads bent close together. “What does it mean? The red thread?”

“It means forever. It crosses time and space. And it’s your ticket out of here.” The woman took Gus’ hand in hers and they both winked out of existence.

Once upon a time there was a selfish man who was turned into a squirrel. It was only in that reduced state that he learned to empathize with his fellow man, and when he brought together two men joined by the red thread of true and abiding love, his curse was lifted. 

Everyone got their happily ever after.

**Author's Note:**

>  **AN:** Because I can’t get enough of [this video of JFlan feeding a squirrel](https://www.instagram.com/p/BvX12LcAM3C/?utm_source=ig_twitter_share&igshid=1m06ldh3grs23), so I felt compelled to write a story about it. No regrets!


End file.
